Asteroid mining company wants you to help find asteroids (protect Earth)

JAKE ELLISO, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By JAKE ELLISON, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Updated 1:10 am, Friday, June 28, 2013

Planetary Resources says this space-based telescope will be the first publicly accessible space telescope and controlled by the crowd, you.
Photo: Screen Shot

Planetary Resources says this space-based telescope will be the...

Planetary Resources says this space-based telescope will be the first publicly accessible space telescope and controlled by the crowd, you. And, contributors to the Kickstarter campaign who pay $25 or more will get their photo on the device in space.
Photo: Screen Shot

Planetary Resources says this space-based telescope will be the...

Planetary Resources says this space-based telescope will be the first publicly accessible space telescope and controlled by the crowd, you. And, contributors to the Kickstarter campaign who pay $25 or more will get their photo on the device in space.
Photo: Screen Shot

Planetary Resources says this space-based telescope will be the...

Peter Diamandis, co-chairman of Planetary Resources, an astroid mining company based in Bellevue, Wash., talks to reporters Wednesday, May 29, 2013, in Seattle about his company's plans for the world's first crowd funded space telescope.
Photo: AP

Graphic depicts the trajectory of asteroid 2012 DA14 on Feb 15, 2013. In this view, we are looking down from above Earth's north pole. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Graphic depicts the trajectory of asteroid 2012 DA14 on Feb 15,...

Graphic depicts the trajectory of asteroid 2012 DA14 during its close approach, as seen edge-on to Earth's equatorial plane. The graphic demonstrates why the asteroid is invisible to northern hemisphere observers until just before close approach: it is approaching from underneath our planet. On the other hand, after close approach it will be favorably placed for observers in the northern hemisphere. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Graphic depicts the trajectory of asteroid 2012 DA14 during its...

Artist's concept of a catastrophic asteroid impact with the early Earth. Credit: NASA/Don Davis

Artist's concept of a catastrophic asteroid impact with the early...

NASA imagines the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs as it breaks up in the asteroid belt and heads for Earth.

Dawn mission data has revealed the rugged
topography and complex textures of the asteroid
Vesta�s surface. Soon other pieces of data such as
the chemical composition, interior structure, and
geologic age will help scientists understand the
history of this remnant protoplanet and its place in
the early solar system. After a year orbiting Vesta,
the Dawn spacecraft will depart in July 2012 for the
dwarf planet Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.
Photo: NASA

Some days it seem like everyone wants something. And now a Bellevue company wants you to help protect the Earth from asteroids – but first it’s got three days to raise several hundred thousand dollars … also from you.

Planetary Resources, the company with big plans to mine asteroids, started a Kickstarter campaign on May 29 for a million bucks to fund the creation and launch of a space-based telescope “for everyone.”

“The ARKYD is a technologically advanced, orbiting space telescope that will be controlled by YOU, the crowd, through your pledges and community involvement! You can even direct your telescope time to non-profit science centers and universities for use in your communities!” the company says on its crowd-funding page.

Also, if you give $25 or more, they will project a photo of you on the outside of the telescope and then take a photo of your photo with the Earth in the background.

So far, Planetary Resources has exceeded its goal by nearly $230,000 and has decided to go for broke and add on a partnership with the citizen science advocates and designers at Zooniverse.

“If pledges reach US$1.7 million in the three remaining days of the campaign, Planetary Resources and Zooniverse will create Asteroid Zoo, a program to allow students, citizen scientists and space enthusiasts to find potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) at home and help train computers to better find them in the future,” the company said in a press release.

Planetary Resources explains that there are a lot of planet-killing-sized asteroids winging around our solar system and many more big enough to destroy a city. Not to put too much pressure on us all, but the company reminds us that some 66 million years ago, a big asteroid hit the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs.

The company explains that there are 620,000 objects currently being tracked and that’s just 1 percent of the 60 million asteroids in our solar system. There are roughly 860 asteroids close enough and big enough to do significant damage to the planet and 155 of those are big enough to kill all life on the planet.

“It is currently estimated that less than one percent of smaller asteroids (less than 100m) have been found. None of these currently pose a threat to Earth, and while many of these asteroids are small, they are capable of regional disaster, such as massive damage to a metro city,” the company wrote in the release.

There’s no immediate threat, but there could be.

So, you are being recruited to pitch in some money and then pitch in some time on your computer to find the bad apples in space that might have a collision with Earth in their flight plan.